Ten Years and Counting

I have a habit of downplaying or accidentally forgetting the arbitrary webcomic milestones I reach, but this one was too big to ignore.

Ten Years

Words can’t describe, or at least they can’t describe well, the joy, the pride and the tremendous gratitude I feel today. That’s because it is ten years today since I started this comic strip, meaning I’ve been doing this essentially my entire adult life so far plus about three years.

To celebrate, I’m launching a brand new website! Let me walk you through it.

Talk to Me, Talk to Other Readers

We’ve now got a comments section and integration for Twitter and Facebook.

Never before has it been so easy to connect with other people who like the strip, or with me. And it’s never been easier to share the comic with your friends. I’m not saying, I’m just saying.

I’ve Launched a Patreon

If I can be uncomfortably super honest for a second, it was really hard for me to make a Patreon account because I have something like a pathological aversion to asking anyone for help, with anything.

I made it ten years without a helping hand, I reasoned, so why would I need one now?

But I’m starting to appreciate how dumb that is. None of this is possible without other people. My wife, for example, helps a great deal by supporting a husband who sets his alarm for 4:30 in the morning every day and draws all evening. And without readers spreading the word, the comic’s audience would never have grown bigger than the one person who was making it — it was all word of mouth.

The fact is some people want to help out, I need to be more gracious in my acceptance of help, and crowdfunding paltforms like Patreon are a great opportunity for each of us to do those things.

Here’s how I talked myself into making the page — I told myself I’m just setting out a tip jar on the counter. Nobody’s under any obligation to put anything in there, just like you’re not under any obligation to tip your waiter. And that’s speaking as someone who spent a year working as a waiter in England, the land where people don’t tip for absolutely everything, and specifically in a cheap chain restaurant in Yorkshire, where 90% of customers were Mr-Pink-ing it up and not leaving so much as a penny.

Yet, through hard work and kissing a lot of butt, the tips I did earn eventually made the difference between saving up enough money to move to the big city where I got a better job and still being trapped there now.

What I’m saying is, I’ve seen first hand how pocket change can change your life.

Maybe nothing will come of it, but then I thought the same thing about the comic itself ten years ago.

People are always asking me to update more often. Well, becoming a patron practically guarantees that I will. Let’s see how far we can take this.

A Bigger, Better Strip
I’ve reposted the entire archive 10% bigger on the new site. It now looks much better on phones than it did before and the image quality is generally nicer. My little gift to you.

But wait, there’s more! We’ve now got a chapter-based archive page that lists comics by name, date and the ‘episode’ they fall into.

Finally, because I love you that much, I’ve cleaned up some of the earlier comics, focusing in particular on ones that suffered from readability issues. That’s three ways the archives are more readable than they’ve ever been before.

What do you think?
Let me know what you think in the comments! That’s the first time I’ve been able to say that!

Obviously, with this being a brand new site on new servers, things are going to be a little shaky. Stuff will break.

Worst of all, I might not be paying for a high enough level of web hosting yet (this is my first time doing this) so the sheer amount of traffic on the site might cause the whole damn thing to fall over.

If that happens, I need you to tell me straight away so I can fork out for the next level up.

In fact, if anything like that happens, reach me here in the comments, by e-mail, on Twitter or on Facebook and I’ll fix it as soon I can.